


The Trunk

by WhiskyNotTea



Series: Whisky's Other Outlander Tales [9]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, missing moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 01:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16460831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskyNotTea/pseuds/WhiskyNotTea
Summary: Jenny and Ian receive Jamie's belongings from Castle Leoch.





	The Trunk

A trunk. Old, big, and heavy. From Leoch, the lad had said.

He had introduced himself as Alastair MacKenzie. Jenny had never seen the man before, but he could just as well have been her cousin. She, in contrast to Jamie, had never been to Leoch. All she knew about the MacKenzie side of her family was based on Jamie’s stories and her ma’s tales.

It was late in the night when the MacKenzie rider arrived, worn from the road. Black circles adorned his eyes, and his boots were caked with mud. They offered him food and a bed, but he declined. He had to leave.

His words reverberated in Jenny’s head even when the echo of his horse’s hooves had died on the dirt, his figure swallowed by the night. “Jamie Fraser and his wife left Leoch a few days ago.”

Jenny stared at the trunk, unable to move. The frown between her eyebrows etched deeper with every passing moment, the words sounding surreal in her ears.

_Jamie and his wife._

The wee gommerel was alive. Alive and  _married_.

With leaden feet, she took a step towards the trunk, then stopped. Another step, then halted again. She turned to look at Ian, whose lips had curled into a wide smile. She met his warm brown eyes with her surprised ones to discover he was tearing up.

It wasn’t the first time Jenny thought her brother dead. She had assumed Jamie had died during his flogging at Fort William, when her da whispered his name on his deathbed. She had thought she was left all alone, when a few days after her father’s funeral the redcoats banged on her door, demanding her brother give himself up. Her heart had fluttered in her chest and she had hardly hidden her smile as she informed the soldiers that she had no idea about her brother’s whereabouts.  

Since then, Jenny had been waiting for a letter. Anything, to tell her how he was fairing. She knew that Jamie couldn’t return to Lallybroch as long as he was a wanted man, but he could surely send word under a pseudonym. He could even send a person he trusted to find her at Lallybroch - but maybe he couldn’t trust anyone after his escape from the English.

Jenny had wished she could search for him. She had a good horse and excellent tracking abilities. But she also had Lallybroch, and she couldn’t leave it for such a long time. It was true, what she’d said to the redcoats - she had no idea where Jamie was.

So Jenny stayed at Lallybroch, hoping that the estate’s tenants would eventually hear some news of her brother. She had repeatedly asked them to inquire about a tall, red-headed lad with slanted blue eyes in their travels.

Two years had passed, each day crushing Jenny’s hopes under the endless waiting for a few words - words written by his hand. For news that never arrived. She had ceased looking at the door, all her hopes lost, when Ian came back from France.

It was him, who had brought news that Jamie had been with him.

“We fought together,” he’d said, “I always take up his place on the right, guardin’ the weak side. Keeping him safe, ken?” He had winked at her once, while recovering from fever.

Jenny couldn’t believe her ears. If Ian would have talked about Jamie a few days before that, she wouldn’t have given his words a second thought, sure they were just fevered dreams confusing his mind, his love for Jamie strong even when he was close to death.

But Ian had been getting better, and he knew what he was talking about. After that, Jenny had spent countless hours with him while he was recovering from his injury, and Ian regaled her with stories about their adventures in France, about Jamie’s bravery and recklessness.

With Ian back at Lallybroch, everything had changed. The pain and shock of the first days had slowly disappeared, giving their place to a warmth that flooded her soul. The cracks of her heart were slowly mended, the emptiness of her life filled with Ian’s merciless banter and his endless patience.

Ian’s news about Jamie had rekindled Jenny’s faith. Her brother might come home, at last.

More years passed, but Jamie never appeared at Lallybroch’s gate. The dogs never barked happily around him, his tall shadow never darkened the ground.

She didn’t dare admit to herself he might be dead. It was only now, seeing the trunk, hearing the lad speak her brother’s name, that she realized she hadn’t taken a deep breath in a very long time.

The moment Ian started shaking his head, laughing out loud, Jenny fell next to the trunk, crying her heart out.

_Jamie was alive._

She felt Ian’s arms around her, his chest still moving with laughter. “I should have known,” he said. “I should have known Jamie would be too stubborn to be dead.”

Violent sobs wracked her whole body, but her heart was light as a feather. Light, but full.

“Hush, a nighean,” Ian murmured, placing soft kisses on her head. “Hush, tis good. Tis all good.”

_It was. She wasn’t the last Fraser anymore._

It took Jenny a few long moments to find her composure again. “He didn’t write,” she said as they moved on the settee, and pressed her lips in a tight line.

“Aye, he didn’t. But maybe he couldn’t do so, Jen,” Ian said, rubbing soothing circles on her back.

“He couldna send a word, but he could find himself a wife?” She raised an eyebrow at her husband, challenging him to disagree with her.

Ian laughed again and squeezed her arm. “Ye ken Jamie. He can be impulsive.”

“Impulsive,” Jenny murmured. “Mmphm,” she added, crossing her hands in front of her chest. “And who is this lass, who married a man wi’ a price on his head?”

“Ye mean ye that wouldna marry me if I had a price on my head? My foot came wi’ a price, and you like it just fine,” Ian teased her, but Jenny only snorted in response.

“I’m serious Ian,” she said. “He’ll come home, d’ye think?” she asked, the harshness in her voice unable to disguise the hope shimmering underneath.

“I dinna ken, mo chridhe. But why would they send their clothes here, if they were no’ to come?”

Jenny frowned, her foot beating a monotonous rhythm against the floor as she was thinking.

Jamie and his wife, coming back home. What would they want?

Would Jamie come back as a free man, to take his rightful position as Laird Broch Tuarach?

_Laird and Lady Broch Tuarach_ , Jenny thought, and smiled wistfully, thinking of her labor to keep Lallybroch standing. The fear, that the redcoats would come back again. The anxiety, that the food production wouldn’t be enough. The sleepless nights, before marrying Ian, when she had to stay awake and take care of the books.

All alone, and she had managed just as fine as her brothers would. She had cared for Lallybroch more than both of them and her father together. Since the day her ma had died, Jenny managed the house, cared for her da and raised her brother. She was always there, as Jamie came and went, first to Leoch and then to Paris. She was there, to tend to their da before he died. She was there, because people needed her. There, because she had nowhere else to go.

Lallybroch was her home, even though it had never been hers. It wasn’t supposed to be, and if Jenny wanted to be honest with herself, she had never cared about titles. Lairds and ladies meant nothing to her. What mattered was the land, the tenants. And for that, she worked hard. She had taken care of everything time and time again. First alone, then with Ian at her side.

It was unfair, to give up the place that held her own sweat and blood, her tears and laughter. It was more than what she was doing, to take care of Lallybroch. It was who she was. Who she had been, since she remembered herself.

And now that Jamie and his wife would arrive, everything would be different.

But Jenny knew that life wasn’t just. And yet, as long as she had Ian, things would be alright, and she would have a home.

Jenny took a deep breath and smiled at her husband. When Ian smiled back, she felt grateful for her luck, her family.

She had no idea if her brother would come back, what would he want, and how this wife of his would be. She knew nothing about her family’s future with the laird back home, but she knew that her da had built a house big enough to accomodate them all. They would be fine.

“And who knows?” Jenny wondered, rubbing her swollen belly. “Little Jamie and the new bairn might have cousins to play with soon.”

She looked towards the door, leaning into Ian with a sigh. The night was quiet, the honeysuckle-infused air coming into the parlour through the open window with a promise of better days to come.

Her brother was alive. And he might come back home soon.

Jenny couldn’t wait to see him again.


End file.
